The present disclosure generally relates to sensors for virtual reality systems, and specifically to developing elastomeric materials for sensors.
Elastomeric materials can be used in various sensors to measure capacitance, which allows determination of user interaction with the elastomeric materials or with objects including the elastomeric materials. For example, a virtual reality system includes elastomeric materials in various components contacting a user to translate physical motion to virtual motion based on capacitance changes or other data captured via sensors including the elastomeric materials or includes actuators made from elastomeric materials that incur electrostatic induced stress or strain to provide tactile feedback to the user via interacting with the virtual reality system. As capacitance of a dielectric material increases proportionally to the value of the dielectric constant (κ) of the dielectric material, increasing values of dielectric constant for elastomeric materials allows actuators or other components including elastomer materials to be more sensitive or to incur greater stress or strain to provide better tactile feedback to a user. However, conventional methods for increasing values of dielectric constants of elastomeric materials makes the elastomeric materials less flexible, impairing use of the elastomeric materials with higher values of dielectric constant values in applications where flexibility is beneficial.